Let us consider what it is to be imprisoned.
Just when he had gained some small measure of contentment as a soldier fighting for the freedom of a nation, Fei Fong Wong was captured by his enemies, and detained in Nortune D Block. D Block was a prison for people from all walks of life, whether they be enemy soldiers, malcontents that threatened the safety of others, or simply those unable to afford the conveniences of modern of society. But while this area seems to be open air and “free” for its downtrodden residents, Fei is outfitted with a bomb collar that will detonate and literally blow his head off if he contravenes the rules. The message is clear: obey or die.
And so Fei is forced, against his will, to do… exactly what he always does.
First, Ricardo “Rico” Banderas attempts to establish the proverbial pecking order by forcing Fei into something like a prison Fight Club. Fei’s indomitable will triumphs, and he trounces those that would battle a man who is barely even awake. This wicked “baptismal” is then followed almost immediately by a recruitment by Imperial Battling Committee Member Rue Cohen. Rue wanted Fei to forsake his fists and once again get in the robot Weltall to (eventually) defeat Rico in Gear combat. Fei was told he would earn his freedom through this act, and that appeared to be the only way Fei would escape his unjust incarceration. In order to have any chance at a life, Fei would have to fight yet again.
And (after an unfortunate bit of sabotage on the part of the champ) Fei fights and is undefeated in the arena. Fei is an excellent martial artist and Gear pilot, so of course he is practically invincible when battling the jalopies of the local residents. This gear is the god-slayer; what hope does W-Shaver have?
But when pilots start going missing, Fei is suspected of being a murderer. Rico, believing Fei to be seeking revenge for any one of many reasons, joins Fei in trying to find “the real killer” either thanks to a feeling of duty or a general fear that Fei is going to murder him next. And how does Fei clear his name? Why, he fights every last mutant in the sewer. Sometimes twice! Eventually, Redrum is discovered and executed for the crime of being a freaky mutant sliming his way around the underground. Was Redrum really responsible for murder? Fei believed so, so Redrum was punched into the stratosphere.
So, complete with solving (“solving”) crimes and fighting in two loose fighting tournaments, was Fei’s life on the inside any different from his existence outside those bars? No. The prison that Fei had created for himself was so much stronger than any bomb collar ever could be. It was the trappings of his own life that kept Fei bound, and he would only find true freedom when the cycle of violence ended.
After he punched about a thousand more soldiers and mutants, of course…
Even Worse Streams presents Xenogears
Night 5
Original Stream Night: February 2, 2021
Night of Battle Arena Toshinden 3
Random Notes on the Stream:
- Welcome back to the ‘gears. Rico is Soulful Blanka, the saddest of Blankas.
- And this turns into a history of Blanka / Street Fighter racism.
- Caliscrub shows up early… but still misses the Blanka fight.
- BEAT does a Paradise Lost.
- And now… BEAT found Donald Trump fanfic. We will not discuss such further.
- Being on stream is “like being alone, but better.” This… might be an own.
- Hammer has glasses… no one knows why. Why do we have glasses? Nobody knows, either, but at least we can note Hammer’s first appearance.
- And then we remember all the cartoons we ever liked are a million years old. … Also, Fei had a bomb collar removed. Sorta.
- Fei lives in a porn universe. Just with robots. There will be no further elaboration on this fact.
BEAT quotes Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” That’s one of the good ones!- If anyone is counting how often we mention Hulk Hogan’s Pastamania, here’s another instance. Soon, we will fight in a fake fighting game.
- Fei lost his fight due to Weltall exploding… so let’s talk about why the Ninja Turtles chose their weapons.
- “They built a fighting game into Xenogears and nobody noticed.”
- We insult Amazon while streaming on Twitch… this may end poorly.
- “You wanna see something soul-rending?”
- As we enter the sewers, we talk about the ugliest King of Fighters. I will continue to defend Max.
- “Mychronics, what a country.”
- No one knows the lyrics to Rico Suave. But we have to do something to stay sane in this sewer dungeon…
- “Those are some gross dolphins, dude.”
- Hey, this was the stream right before Boxboy + Boxgirl times.
- This sewer is driving us apart as we argue over whether Gamecube games are any good. I am firmly pro-Double Dash.
- We can at least agree Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time is terrible.
Everyone knows how long it took to get to Redrum. It was forever.- “Have you ever found Waldo? It’s a pain in the ass!” … Oh, look, we close as Elly gets her own “meanwhile”. Been a while since we saw her.
Next time on Xenogears: Fei gets early release for good explosions.
Chrono Cross was always a complicated, labyrinthian mess of a game. From 
Look, it would be easy to be mad at Chrono Cross for trying to have its cake and eat it too with its complicated “real” fight against a dinosaur computer and then a puzzle fight against the true big bad… but you know what? I can count on one hand the number of JRPGs that, up to this very day, end with a boss fight that requires anything but a high strength stat. Are there interesting, intricate final bosses out there? Of course, but so many still boil down to “hit it harder”. The Time Devourer is something different, and, like the rest of Chrono Cross, that is interesting all by itself.
Hulk Hogan kept the Pastamania Regalia. You cannot convince me otherwise.
My parents were good, decent people that tried their best to raise a superior Goggle Bob. In some cases, I can say they failed, as it is clear my unchecked narcissism will one day destroy the world. Because I’m perfect, I must blame my parents for that inevitability. However, in many cases, they were successful. For instance, my parents were deathly afraid of me watching any kind of super violent or super sexual material, so they steered me towards books. This meant that I was not allowed to watch the R-rated movie Stephen King’s Thinner, but I was allowed to read the source novel. This led to a lovely situation wherein, a few years later, I was a goddamned wizard at typing out vivid descriptions of oral sex, which was a boon when you’re a teenager in the early days of cybering. Unfortunately, this policy also had some drawbacks, as I was not allowed to see a number of potentially frightening movies from the time I was a young’un. As a result, I never saw Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and was forced to content myself with the NES adaption as a consolation prize.
And, on their own, these gremlins might not be scary. The graphics are particularly nice for a NES game, so the gremlins are rendered well… but still matching their generally goofy big screen versions. Aside from the big, bad, boss gremlins, the average gremlin looks like it would be right at home in the Mushroom Kingdom. And Gizmo earns progressively better weapons, so, while he doesn’t exactly have a spread beam in his inventory, he’s also not the least equipped hero on the NES (that would be 
And, speaking of which, those Big Cores are big threats, but their mammoth size makes then lumbering giants compared to your lithe Vic Viper. Everything is slow and nonthreatening on the NES, because almost all NES games put their focus on other areas. You can either have a gigantic, expressive mechanical dragon, or a teeny tiny dragon that takes forever to clear the screen. Neither is going to scare anyone.
System: Nintendo Entertainment System. There were also versions for Gameboy, DOS, Commodore 64, and some manner of Atari… but they’re not nearly as traumatic.
Video Games owes Wrestling an apology.
And, to be clear, I’m not saying that games with complicated controls are inherently bad, quite the contrary, I’m ramping up to praise the franchise that introduced “rotate the controller 720 degrees and then hit three buttons at once”, but there’s a difference between “easy to learn, difficult to master” and “I’d love to play this game with you, but please read this complete FAQ first otherwise you have no hope of winning.” It is almost understandable in a two player game, but when a game asks for four people to grab controllers, well, if one player has difficulty understanding the exact methods to perform simple moves, forget about it when your fourth player is Ted’s visiting friend from the country. Mario Kart is right there, and everybody understands karts, right?
And it stings most of all in a game like this. Lucha Libre Héroes del Ring is a wrestling game sponsored by a professional luchadore wrestling association straight out of Mexico. You could not get a more colorful collection of characters together in real life. The Ryu of this game is a fellow named Abismo Negro, who is a big dancing skeleton. Do you know how many games should feature dancing skeletons? The answer is: all of them. It is the entire reason Dry Bones was introduced to the Mario universe. And it gets even weirder from there: there is a character literally named Murder Clown. And he works with a guy named Zombie Clown! And Electroshock, which I’m sure conjures up images of a third rate Spider-Man villain, but, nope, he dresses like Inside-Out Boy for whatever inexplicable reason. There are pages of Wikipedia data on these guys, because, yeah, you need an explanation for why anyone would go by the alias of “Charly Manson”.